about:mozillahttps://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla
Sat, 14 Jun 2014 17:00:17 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1Throw a party with Mozilla!https://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/2014/06/14/throw-a-party-with-mozilla/
https://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/2014/06/14/throw-a-party-with-mozilla/#commentsSat, 14 Jun 2014 14:40:25 +0000http://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/?p=2536about:mozilla is a round-up of news and contribution opportunities. In this issue, we’re excited to share opportunities to throw a Maker Party, find your way home and stay safe on the Web.

Make and teach the Web with Maker Party from July 15 to September 15!Last year, over 100,000 people in 330 cities participated in Maker Party, Mozilla’s global campaign to teach the Web. Maker Party unites educators, organizations and enthusiastic Web users with hands-on learning and making.

Individuals and organizations join Maker Party by attending an event in their area or running an event to teach the Web to their friends, family or communities.

Hosting a Maker Party is not only personally rewarding, it also contributes to the greater goal of increasing Web literacy for everyone, everywhere in the world.

June is Internet Safety Month!Helping people stay safe on the Web is a crucial part of our Manifesto.
By keeping your browser up to date and creating unique and secure passwords for each of your accounts, you’re already taking steps toward a secure browsing experience.

Here are some ways you can learn more about how to stay safe online and how to join us in helping keep you and your personal information safe:

Contribute to the Internet’s safety with PriMo, the privacy team at Mozilla.

Read more about how to make life awkward for hackers and share our guide with your family and friends.

Have a happy (and secure) Internet Safety Month!

Featured Contributor: Sujith ReddySujith Reddy, a contributor from Hyderabad, India, is an open Web enthusiast and believes that “being open is freedom.” His focus is on evangelizing for developers with Angelhack, the world’s largest hackathon, but says there are lots of ways to get involved.

Sujith says, “Because Mozilla is not just a foundation, but a community, I find it interesting to contribute to the organization… Mozilla provides me an opportunity to talk to the people about the Open Web.” According to Sujith, Mozilla recognizes its contributors better than any other open source organization. He likes collaborating with other Mozilla contributors, which he finds “interesting, challenging, and fun”

Thank you for being an advocate for the open Web, Sujith!

Sujith got involved with Mozilla through teaching the Web with Webmaker.

Choose your own adventure with What Can I Do for Mozilla
We want to keep you connected to contribution opportunities that are right for you, so we created What Can I Do for Mozilla? to do just that.

Whether you’re interested in education, coding, documentation, or translation, this site will help you find the right place to get involved. Contribution can take on many forms, from teaching the web with Webmaker to writing code for Firefox.

Firefox Affiliates 2.0 connects you with your favorite Mozilla productsIn 2011, we launched the Firefox Affiliates program, which allows you to embed buttons on your personal website to share your love of Mozilla. This program allows you to make our products better and support our mission with just a few clicks.

This week, we’re proud to announce the new Firefox Affiliates’ new look! With almost 100,000 affiliates and growing, we can join together to promote innovation, opportunity and openness on the Internet.

If you aren’t a Firefox Affiliate yet, why don’t you become one today? If you already are, we are sure you will love the new platform as much as we do and invite others to become one as well.

Mozilla’s WebDev team tells you all about the new affiliates program on their blog.

Want to know what’s next for Firefox Affiliates? WebDev’s roadmap will tell you.

Featured Contributor: Peiyong LinA long time Firefox user, Peiyong Lin first contributed to Mozilla in October, 2013. As a coder, he has written a variety of patches for both Firefox and Servo and also provided translation and volunteer encouragement for his local community.

Peiyong is a programmer finishing up his degree at Sun Yat-sen University in Guandong Province in China and loves to dive into Firefox projects to grow with Mozilla.

Regarding his involvement, he says, “It’s very exciting when you know that people may have a better experience when they get access to the Internet… Mozilla has the power to shape the future of the Internet. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to get involved?”

]]>https://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/2014/05/30/choose-your-own-adventure-firefox-marketplace-and-more/feed/0about:mozilla is back!https://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/2014/05/15/aboutmozilla-is-back/
https://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/2014/05/15/aboutmozilla-is-back/#commentsThu, 15 May 2014 16:47:34 +0000http://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/?p=2525about:mozilla is a round-up of news and contribution opportunities. Here’s what’s happening this week.

Celebrate the new Firefox and shape the future of the Web
After more than two years of development, we’re proud to release the new version of Firefox!

The new, streamlined design promotes ease of use and accessibility. We also worked under the hood to make it the fastest browser out there. And the improved Firefox Sync keeps your passwords, history and bookmarks up to date across all your devices.

Although Firefox’s many new features and improvements are exciting, we also followed our mission: we are making the Internet accessible to anyone, putting you in control of your data, and making sure that privacy is written into your browsing experience.

Medic Mobile’s open source technology tracks outbreaks, schedules maternal health visits, monitors medicine stock, and connects villages with hospitals to community health centers that support 5 million people around the world.

Mozilla is committed to providing affordable, easy-to-use technology for everyone with Firefox OS.

Jennie believes that contribution is not just for self-described coders and wants to encourage everyone from teachers to documentarians to join together protect the Open Web. She engages other librarians, educators, and library workers through outreach and education to get more people involved in Open Web projects.

Thank you for all your contributions to keeping the web free & open, Jennie!

Featured EventThis month’s featured community event is the Webmaker Mentor Community Call. Every Thursday, you can join Webmakers from all over the world to talk about web literacy, teaching the web and innovating in the learning space.

3… 2… 1… MozFest!
What happens when 1,400 people who want to shape the future of the Internet meet up? That was one of the questions we asked ourselves before our fourth annual Mozilla Festival in London. During this awesome three-day event filled with learning, making and teaching a huge group of brilliant people tackled a big challenge: How do we help passive consumers become active makers and creators? The outcome is truly stunning. 12-year old Sylvia from California built a robot that can paint with water color. It’s completely open source, which means that you can learn from it and even build one on your own. This is one of the dozens of other projects like the 3D papercraft creator, the Emergency Hacklab and KettleCorn.

Share Your Firefox with Friends using Guest BrowsingFirefox for Android is definitely the most customizable browser for your mobile device. Thanks to a new feature, you can share its power with your friends and family without having to worry about them looking at your browsing history, passwords or open tabs. With just a few taps you can quickly lock your personal data and give your guest a fresh browsing experience. This means that you can let your friends borrow your phone to browse the Web while your personal data remains personal. Apart from that, you can now easily set a picture on the Internet as your device’s wallpaper or add it to a contact just by pressing and holding the image.

Leading the Way to Preserving Our Freedoms, Minimizing SurveillancePrivacy is something that has played a huge role since Mozilla was created – and it’s definitely one of the most important things on the Web. However, when it comes to technology, most people feel that they have little control over their security. So how exactly do you give users more privacy? By creating a virtuous cycle between trust and control? These and many more questions will be answered by Dr. Ann Cavoukian on Friday, November 15th. Her presentation called “Privacy by Design” will help you understand the seven foundational principles to ensure that privacy and data protection are embedded throughout the entire technology life cycle.

MozBus – A Nomadic Web FactoryHow can we deliver the Web to all people at any time, anywhere and under any circumstances? If people can’t go to the Web, it simply comes to them! Last month we introduced the start of the Mozilla Bus project in Japan which is equipped with everything you need to conduct roving workshops, teach the Web or explore new possibilities for using, experiencing and building it. The bus can be used regardless of the location and even in the case of a disaster, in which it will use its own on-board network. This will be expanded into an Asia-wide disaster prevention project infrastructure.

A Million Mozilla VoicesWhat does it sound like when a global community builds the Internet that the world needs and deserves? During the Mozilla Summit 2013 we unveiled MozillaVoices.com, which lets you add your sound by clicking on a globe. So far, over 640,000 Mozillians added their “voice” and our goal is to reach the 1,000,000 mark. But to show the world how big and alive our community really is, we need your help – and your voice!

Firefox OS Launches in Brazil and Germany
In the last few weeks, we have successfully launched the very first Firefox OS smartphones in Spain, Colombia, Venezuela and in Poland. Now, shortly after the release of a major update with new features, we have kicked off the launch in the next two countries, Brazil and Germany.

We are happy to announce that Congstar now offers the Alcatel One Touch Fire in Germany. Being the very first smartphone in Germany that exclusively relies upon open web technologies, it combines all features that you would expect: being able to make phone calls, send text messages, e-mails, take photos and more. Those are the exact same things the new LG Fireweb can do – it’s sold by Vivo in Brazil and comes with a 4 inch screen, a camera and the much-praised Firefox Marketplace where you can not only just download useful apps and games, but also Portuguese newspapers, dictionaries and magazines.

Your Name on the Mozillians Monument in San FranciscoSince 1998, when Mozilla was brought to life, hundreds of people have helped us in making the web more open. Back then, you were able to write down the names of all contributors onto a single sheet of paper. about:credits, an online list of people who have contributed to this project, has collected thousands of names over the last few years and now it’s time to show it to the world.

We’re working on constructing a 14 foot (4m) monument in front of our new space in San Francisco. On this structure, we want to have the names of every Mozillian including you. If you are a current or past contributor and want your name to be on it as well, let us know!

Highlights From the Mozilla Summit 2013The Mozilla Summit 2013 was an assembly of all Mozillians coming together for three days in three different locations to connect and get inspired. One of the highlights of the was definitely the dinner party on Friday, followed by our lovely mascot doing some crowd surfing. While the Mozillians in Santa Clara were jamming to the probably best song ever and showing off their dancing skills, the Mozillians in Brussels proved that they were just as good when it comes to singing:

When the karaoke party reached its peak, more than twenty people were jumping around on stage singing Nirvana’s song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as the others cheered. The coolest (pun intended) activity however was the hockey game at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto – where the desktop team played against the mobile team in an exciting match.

Helping 58,000 People Teach and Learn the Web in Three MonthsAbout four months ago, we kicked off our global Maker Party that invited you to make something amazing on the Web. Nearly 60,000 people met up at over 1,600 events around the world to share their skills, make and break things on the Internet. Using helpful tools like Thimble, which allows you to create and remix websites as easy as possible, and the most popular tool Popcorn Maker, they have created tens of thousands webpages and videos. But although this year’s Maker Party is over, it’s never too late to connect with other Web enthusiasts to collaborate and have fun – regardless of your skill levels.

Where is Mozilla?Exploring Mozilla Spaces near you is quite easy – you simply go to our contact page. Unfortunately, design-wise it’s quite outdated. Thanks to our awesome design team, this is about to change with a new overview of our local communities and spaces. Apart from different communities, you will also be able to find a lot of pictures, links and relevant content on the redesigned page. This is where we need you – tell us about your local Mozilla community and share photos of them with us.

One Mozilla. Three locations. 1146 people.
The Mozilla Summit is an event where all Mozillians come together to connect (in some cases even find the love of your life), get inspired and set the direction Mozilla is heading to.

Back then in 2010, a bit over 600 Mozillians and a few brown bears were invited to the Summit in one of Canada’s most beautiful cities, Whistler. In the last three years however, our community has grown a lot and we ended up having over 2,000 people on our list.

The only solution was to spread them across three different cities: Brussels, Toronto and Santa Clara. Yet, the agenda was almost the same in all of the locations, thanks to our careful planning.

12 Months of Planning for 3 Days of AwesomenessHow do you plan an event that is supposed to run at the same time for three days in three cities? How do you split up 800 paid employees and 1,400 volunteers equally? In order to make the summit the best so far, our team around Mardi Douglass and Katherine Naszradi had to start planning almost one year ago.

One of the biggest challenges was securing venues in each city – originally, we wanted Paris to be one of the three Summit cities. But in the end we had to choose Brussels instead (and we don’t regret it). The very last obstacle was securing visas for those who had to travel to another country. Because this didn’t work out for everyone, we kept those who couldn’t come in our minds.

Spotlight on: Shumway, Appmaker and Together.JSOne of the main purposes of the Summit was to shape the future of the web. Now it’s time to show off what it looks like:

One of the three technologies that will revolutionize the Web is Shumway. It converts Adobe Flash content to blazing-fast HTML5 without the need of any third-party-software and you can already test it in the latest Nightly built of Firefox.

The second tool is called Appmaker and it makes creating HTML5 cross-platform apps easy as pie. By dragging and dropping elements like buttons and sliders onto a canvas, you can create your very own app that can run on any device that supports the Web, including mobile phones.

Last but not least, Together.js is two lines of code you can add to any website to enable realtime collaboration.

Firefox OS 1.1 launchWe also took the chance to kick off the second round of Firefox OS launches in even more markets around the world at the summit. Just weeks after we successfully launched the first Firefox OS smartphones, we are glad to tell you that they will soon come to Germany, Brazil and three other Latin America markets as well.

If you already have a device, we are happy to announce the next version of Firefox OS, which adds MMS support, a push notifications API for developers, an enhanced app search and support for even more languages.

Have a good week folks and keep rocking the Web!

]]>https://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/2013/10/10/one-mozilla-three-locations-1146-people/feed/0The Firefox Flicks Winners Are In, Making the Web at Campus Party and more…https://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/2013/09/24/the-firefox-flicks-winners-are-in-making-the-web-at-campus-party-and-more/
https://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/2013/09/24/the-firefox-flicks-winners-are-in-making-the-web-at-campus-party-and-more/#commentsTue, 24 Sep 2013 19:40:22 +0000http://blog.mozilla.org/about_mozilla/?p=2502about:mozilla is a round-up of news and contribution opportunities. Here’s what’s happening this week.

Share Your Favorite Website with Firefox for AndroidFirefox for Android is definitely the best browser for your phone and now it just got even better: The new quickshare feature allows you to share favorite websites with a single tap with Facebook, Twitter or via email. To make it even simpler, you can just bump your phone against your friend’s phone to share open tabs, a recipe or an article. To make it even easier to read those things on a small screen, we also added new updates to Reader: You can now change the font on your preference and depending on the level of light in the room, Firefox for Android will switch between the light and the dark mode. So what are you waiting for?

Firefox OS Devices Are Back on EbayFirefox OS is our brand new and open operating system for mobile phones which will forever change the way you interact with the Web on the go. It literally changes and transforms with you to meet your needs – no matter if you want to look for a movie, watch it or even buy cinema tickets, with Firefox OS everything is just a few taps away.

Roughly a month after the initial launch, ZTE made the ZTE Open phone available for you to get on eBay for just $79. Within just two days, it was completely sold out, but now the ZTE Open is back again and waiting just for you.

The Firefox Flicks Winners Are InA few months ago, we announced the 2013 Firefox Flicks Competition and put you to a challenge: Create a video which shows people how the power of the Web can change people’s lives. Now, after having received over 400 entries, our celebrity judges have picked the best flicks. The grand prize winning motion picture “Spot the Difference” shows in a humorous way how to discover, enjoy and share content on the go. To celebrate all the six winning films, we held a premiere party at the Toronto International Film Festival – now it’s your turn to congratulate them!

Making the Web @ Campus PartyTwo weeks ago, the O2 in London was filled with hackers, developers, gamers and technophiles and most importantly, Mozillians like you. While our Firefox Student Ambassadors handed out t-shirts and showed how to get involved with Mozilla, you also had the opportunity to make the Web while drinking smoothies: One of the main focuses was on teaching the web using the Webmaker tools during our fun contests. Whether you were challenged to pit pacman against space invaders or even pirates versus ninjas, the results are truly creative.

Celebrate Firefox OS
After nearly two years of hard work, Firefox OS has finally launched. Our new and open operating system for mobiles already found its way on some handsets and into countries like Spain and Poland. Built entirely using open standards, it’s free from the rules of existing platforms. The launch is truly a reason to celebrate in an extravagant way – and we’ll break barriers like time zones by doing it in the exact same moment. A message will automatically be shared by you and the other thousands of supporters, generating excitement and demand. All you have to do is to click a single button.

Firefox Wins the Web Browser Grand Prix
In the latest Browser Grand Prix by a respected tech authority, Firefox was competing against Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer. The first of the three tests was not very surprising: The new version of Firefox replaced the former performance champion Google Chrome as the new speed king. The reliability and security tests were passed by Firefox very easily as well – and it came in first, yet again. This means that with the excellent reliability, combined with near-native start times, Firefox is the speed and stability king of all browsers.

Our Paris Office Officially Opened Its Doors
The last month at Mozilla was absolutely crazy – especially in Paris! We opened the new office in one of Europe’s nicest cities with a well-attended event. The inauguration of the historical building (it even has gold leafs!) began with a Firefox OS Hackathon. Together with our contributors, developers and employees we spent the following days watching exciting demos. And what would be a better way to wrap up such an event than celebrating a VIP party with you, Mitchell Baker and the French Minister for the Digital Economy, Fleur Pellerin. After such an amazing week, all we can say is: Merci for coming!

A New Look For Mozillians.org
What’s the name of the guy who lives in the UK and works on Firefox? And where can I find somebody who knows how to fix a website? Our community directory at mozillians.org will answer that question in no time. This site is for you and all of the thousands of volunteers. That’s why we worked behind the scenes to update the design for the homepage and the whole directory. Along with the new look, there are also new features like the ability to search for public profiles without logging in. As soon as you log in, you’ll see important announcements and fun facts about Mozillians based on information in the database.

Firefox OS Twitter Chat
When will Firefox OS be available in my country? Why does Firefox OS matter? How will it shape the mobile world? Instead of asking these questions to yourself, why don’t you ask the Executive Chair of Mozilla, Mitchell Baker? Tomorrow, starting at 10:30am PST, she will be answering your questions and read your personal comments about Firefox OS. If you have answers to questions other users are asking, feel free to help answer them. But make sure to tell us about your thoughts as well!

(Re)building a Simplified Firefox Logo
The new version of the Firefox logo that was unveiled in 2009 was an amazing piece of artwork. After almost four years, it’s time to take an evolutionary leap forward and tackle issues like color consistency. But we also listened to your feedback and are proud to uncover the new logo. We simplified its style by removing the high gloss and trimming the fox’s fur. A very little detail you may notice is that the fox now has a shoulder. Because simplifying a style doesn’t always mean bringing it down to basic geometric shapes and solid colors, the design team has made major efforts to create it. But judging by the results, it was definitely worth it.

Amp Your Firefox Contest
If you want to do anything from block ads to quickly translate a website then there’s an add-on for that! Many of our users install them to have fun, be more productive or customize their favorite browser. We challenge you to amp up their Firefox even more by creating or updating add-ons on both desktop and mobile. Our panel of judges will pick the best add-on from each of the five prize categories and give you the chance to win an Android tablet or even a MacBook Air. But since it’s the taking part that counts, every participant will receive a cool “Amp Your Firefox” t-shirt for their approved entry.

Launch of Firefox OS – Thoughts and History
It all started two years ago when Robert Nyman, who was new to Mozilla back then, saw a wiki page called “B2G” emerging. Boot to Gecko was the code name for an open operating system for mobiles based on the rendering engine of Firefox. Soon, the press picked up the story and although the response was mainly positive, there were also some skeptics. This month, the first Firefox OS devices launched in Spain – and in the very near future, a number of other countries will be announced. But what is Firefox OS? It’s not just about open source, open standards and open web apps, but more importantly about bringing users to the web on the go with affordable options.

Stop Watching Us
By the time you read this blog post it’s entirely possible that the US government has already read it twice. A few weeks ago, media reports emerged that the government is collecting huge amounts of data from Internet companies. The revelations confirm many of our worst fears and put the privacy of hundreds of millions of people at stake. We’re taking a stand for users and launched a campaign sponsored by a broad coalition of organizations from around the world to demand full knowledge of the extent to which our data is being monitored. When we asked the public to get involved and respond to SOPA/PIPA, we received an overwhelming amount of responses. The same thing happened with ACTA in the EU. Now, we’re asking you to take a stand as well.

Mozilla Ignite Winners
What would you do if your connection was 250 times faster than the internet most of us are used to today? This question was asked to anybody who was willing to take part in Mozilla Ignite, a 12-month open innovation challenge that invited people to design and prototype apps for the faster, smarter internet of the future. The winning applications provide a glimpse of what’s possible when we make networks not only faster, but also smarter and deeply programmable. One of the winning apps lets you explore the surface of Mars interactively, while another app enables 3D video-conferencing using open web components.

Introducing Firefox OS
A few months ago we introduced Firefox OS, a mobile operating system that is just as open as Firefox. We promised to give more people access to the Web in more ways than ever before and a promise is a promise! Now we are proud to announce that we are preparing to launch the first Firefox OS smartphones with our partners. The phone that is affordable for anyone will kick off its launch today in Spain. It will be offered by Movistar for just €69, including €30 of balance for prepaid customers and a microSD card. If you live in Colombia or Venezuela, you just have to wait for a few more weeks. No matter where you are, Firefox OS will revolutionize the way you use the Internet on the go.

Success and Firefox OS
As the Chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker recaps why we build products, what they represent and how they relate to our goals — just in time for the launch of Firefox OS. Our goal is to build openness, opportunity and innovation into online life. Firefox for desktop has already done this in many ways, being a pioneer in the world of open source consumer products. As a result of giving developers huge opportunities for innovation in areas they care about, it has helped usher in a whole new era of Web computing. With Firefox OS we hope to do something similar with the world of mobile computing. We want to prove that the Web is a powerful and flexible platform that excites people.

Why Firefox OS?
Christian Heilmann, a technical evangelist living in London, has been focused on Firefox OS for a pretty long time. As he’s worked with it, he’s also helped programmers building apps and spent hours writing about it or showing off the powerful operating system. In his latest blog post, he explains why he is excited about the launch of Firefox OS: that you get a very great phone for a low price which puts the web in your pocket. Because it does not assume a fast and stable connection, it kills the idea of mobile web connectivity only being for a privileged few in the western world.

Now that the cat — pardon, the fox — is out of the bag, you can benefit from a rewarding platform that will not charge you at the whim of company goals or shareholder demands.